Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning.
The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.
[Eugene S. Wilson]

Last weekend, I taught a sock-knitting class at the Temptations knitting retreat near Columbus, Ohio. Not only was the event well organized and I met many lovely people, but I also learned a lot by teaching. I always learn a lot while teaching.

Each time I’m in a class setting, I’m reminded that the main task of teaching is helping overcome obstacles to learning. Everyone in the class knew how to knit and purl. My idea is, if you know that, you can knit anything that fascinates you enough to motivate you to persevere. My job is to convince you that, yes, you really can do it.

Also, it gives me the opportunity to see how my patterns look through other people’s eyes. I can come home and refine the project pattern based upon the places where people encountered problems. I’d not want to write patterns in a vacuum, never knowing if they worked for other people.

Temptations is located at 35 S. High Street, Dublin, Ohio 43017

An optimist is the human personification of spring.
[Susan J. Bissonette]

I know spring is coming. Meanwhile, my hands were uncomfortably cold while I worked at my keyboard so I knit these mitts. I’d have taken a photo with them on my hands except my arms aren’t long enough to get a clear photo.

These are stranded knitting. The one on the right shows the palm. When I knit mitens, I increase toward the plam instead of the thumb since that is where I need the extra fabric. I worked these the same way.

Luck is the residue of design.
[Branch Rickey]

Here it is, finished. The first photo is the sock drying on the streatcher. While I was working the twenty five red rows for the foot, I was thinking I’d like to reinforce the toe too, so I repeated the cuff pattern. The plain grey on the toe is also knit with two strands of yarn although you can’t see that since they are the same color.

I like putting designs on the toe of a sock. I never know where I might take off my shoes. Even if I don’t, it is like having lace on my pettycoat. Even though nobody sees it, I know it is there and it makes me smile.

Only with winter-patience can we bring
The deep-desired, long-awaited spring.
[Anne Morrow Lindbergh]

Yesterday, I shoveled some more snow, drew some more flowers for an illustration job (nice counterpoint to shoveling snow), and turned the sock heel with a technique I’d not tried before.

Marilyn B. commented on the Design-1 post that stranded knitting makes her socks last longer. I find this to be true too—especially if I use a yarn that felts the strands on the inside as you wear the sock—so I decided to work a stranded heel. Had I worked a heel with a flap, this would have been a matter of working back and forth with the two colors. Then I could have switched back to the red to pick up stitches along the sides of the flap and decrease for the gusset. That didn’t dawn on me until I had finished the heel turn. Duh.

Instead, I worked the heel I usually use, and did the stranding with intarsia in the round. The red yarn makes a complete round and the grey yarn goes back and forth. Once I figured it out, it wasn’t hard to do. It is like working a puzzle. I did the check because it made it easier to purl the grey back to where it needed to be. Tomorrow, the foot and toe.

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

I guess socks aren’t really lingerie nor as enticing as fish-net hose, but these Valentine socks are warmer. Since snow is blowing horizontally this morning, warmer seems like a good idea. The February Socks from …and a time to knit stockings use both stranded knitting and a dab of lace knitting — simple yarn overs and knit two togethers. Since lace spreads more than stranded knitting, it is best worked on smaller needles. The decorative cast on is longtail using red and white. The ends of the yarn are twisted into a little pig tail.

The shortest answer is doing.
[Lord Herbert]

Edie Stern in Yorktown Heights, New York sent me this photo of a pair of socks she knit using the “Waves & Rivulets” pattern in the Tongue River Farm Sock Collection. She writes, “I’ve been knitting 30 years or so, all of it as an intermediate knitter (nothing fancy). I lived in Florida for most of that time, and just moved north six years ago, so my knitting has increased obsessively. Living within driving range of Rhinebeck has done wonders for my obsessiveness too.”

Edie contacted me by email before Christmas for help with deciphering the heel instructions. When I composed the Tongue River book several years ago, I struggled with how to present the heel instructions, and, using feedback from knitters, I have since refined the way I present it in patterns. She has since finished the socks, as you can see. She writes, “I like these better than any socks I’ve knitted before, and they fit better too. They’re warm and lovely, and I’m ready to start another pair out of your book. This one was challenging and fun.”

You can imagine that this made me feel as warm and fuzzy as . . . well, as a pair of hand-knit socks. This heel treatment is the same as the one I’ve discussed in that last couple of posts. For more about the book she used, select this LINK.

Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.
[Sharon Schuster]

This sock may be absurd, but it is not impossible. It is from my Tougue River Farm Sock Collection book. The heel is worked in the same technique as the little socks I posted yesterday. You can see by the stripes in the gusset how many stitches were added to allow ease in the heel shaping. Fit depends upon the shape of a person’s foot. For me, these fit well with no bunching on the front of my foot.

These socks are knit using two colors, stranded in a Fair Isle manner. The blossom idea came from a silk-screened komono. I have a sweater that uses variations of this pattern that I will photograph and post in the near future.

When I knit a sock using stranded knitting, I either knit on larger needles or add more stitches than I would with a plain sock since it isn’t as elastic. Vertical stripes make it even less elastic. When I knit a plain sock, I often rib the back of the heel and the gusset.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
[Gaily Sheehy]

Over the years, I’ve knit socks with a wide variety of heel-turn techniques. Then I bought sock yarn that was dyed to fall into a pattern as it was knitted. As I was working on the leg, I kept asking myself how I would work the heel so it wouldn’t interrupt the pattern. I looked at the anatomy of my foot and unvented this non-stop heel. Since I make many stranded-knitting socks, I soon discovered that I could keep in pattern using this method.

At the end of February, I’m scheduled to teach this heel technique at a retreat in Ohio so I am currently working on handouts. I already had a small sock designed to teach a variety of techniques (the green and pink sock pattern can be printed off at this LINK). I also had developed the child’s sock pattern with the lace, leaf cuff. However, I wanted a simple pattern that wouldn’t take up much workshop time to knit the leg and get to the heel. The sock on the upper left is the result — knit on thirty-two stitches using DK-weight yarn.